GETTING A FEEDBACK EMAIL ACCOUNT
If you have a feedback email account, review the emails you've received throughout the year looking for both positive and negative comments. If you receive few feedback emails, you may not be making it easy for readers to solicit feedback, or it just maybe that you haven't established enough of a "personality" that motivates your readers to respond.
Have you conducted any reader surveys during the year? If so, what were the key findings upon which you can act in the coming year? Next, analyze your Web site statistics. If you publish a newsletter, which types of articles are most visited on your Web site? If you are selling online, which product categories are most visited and which products and categories produced the most orders and revenue.
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If your organization produces more than one email newsletter or campaign, see if your fellow email marketers will share their data so you can benchmark key metrics. Additionally, comparing your performance to "industry averages" can provide confirmation that your program is on track, or in need of some first aid.
Next, pull together samples of your actual messages and subject lines. With the above benchmarks and analysis in mind, review each of the following creative areas looking for what approach drove the best results:
_ Subject Line - Length, tone, style and whether you included company or publication name
_ Layout/Format/Length - Did you change formats? Compare the various formats over time - not just one or two messages? Did you switch from full articles to teasers, or postcard to a multiple product format?
_ Content Style - Do some newsletters have more personality than others? Is your style full of humor, or just
the facts and conservative in nature?
_ Segmentation/Personalization - Did you send special messages that had a higher level of personalization or segmentation than others? Were the results significantly different?